Today we’d like to introduce you to Paige Mejia.
Paige, can you briefly walk us through your story – how you started and how you got to where you are today.
Our company was founded by Randy Beckham in 1979. He was working in television production and had learned some pyro effects for various projects. He was leaving for a Spring Break vacation and found that everyone in the office was acting weird. When he probed further he found they had suddenly made the decision to close the business and he would be returning from vacation unemployed! He decided to take action into his own hands and made calls to potential clients from his hotel room in South Padre Island and landed a pyro gig for a BeeGees CBS Special. That began his road to creating Pyrotex.
Fast forward to 2011, I was in the wedding and event industry with my own video production business which I had started in my attempt to be a stay at home mom. When my youngest child was starting kindergarten, I made the decision to go back to full time work for financial reasons.
Returning to Corporate America proved harder than I thought with all of the freedom and flexibility I had experienced over the previous 5 years, so I looked to social media to inquire about any event industry positions with flexibility to allow me to be a mommy too. Randy knew me through the International Society of Special Events and offered to take me on as a part time/full time sales person. For the past six years, I have served as the Sales and Marketing Director for the company and increased business year after year to more than double our annual income since 2011.
Randy experienced various health concerns over the past few years and, on July 6, 2017, he passed away, leaving the company to his corporate team, including myself, and his wife. We are proud to continue the legacy he built and expand Pyrotex to what we know it can become.
Great, so let’s dig a little deeper into the story – has it been an easy path overall and if not, what were the challenges you’ve had to overcome?
Being a firework provider definitely has it’s own special set of obstacles, from city officials to venue owners as well as fighting the price war with our competitors. From a sales standpoint, the latter is certainly the biggest hurdle as it is hard to convince a client that you get what you pay for without making it sound like a sales pitch!
My favorite part of being in this industry is networking and forming relationships. I have found my own little niche by helping others develop and expand their own businesses which has thrust my name, and our company, into the limelight. I focus on the networking side while my co-owners focus on the regulation side, to ensure that we remain the company with the most stellar reputation among industry professionals and state and local fire marshals and other officials, and the design side, to ensure that our shows are the most spectacular and unique to each client.
Please tell us about Pyrotex.
Pyrotex produces indoor and outdoor firework and pyrotechnic displays across Texas. Since 1979, we have fired shows internationally for weddings, social and corporate events, sporting events, concerts, television and movies, city festivals, holiday displays, and even a couple of funerals! Since Randy began the company as a concert pyrotechnician, indoor pyrotechnics are our specialty, but we have also acquired new outdoor product which set us apart.
We are in the process of expanding our offerings to include other special effects beyond pyrotechnics, including color changing cryo-jets and confetti cannons. We are known for the high quality and precision of our product which is custom and hand made for us from the manufacturers we have selected after years of searching for the perfect producer. Among our usual clients, we are most known for our professionalism. In the State of Texas, firework companies legally have to have one licensed technician onsite and the crew needs no training.
However, all of our employees are part time employees of Pyrotex, not contract labor, have been fully trained annually, passed strenuous ATF background checks and drug testing, are covered by Workers Compensation, and everyone on the crew is professional, in attitude and dress, and works efficiently to produce a beautiful show. All of our shows are same day set up using a system we designed to allow us to work smarter and not harder!
As the Sales Director, I am usually present for the shows to help coordinate the crew and the choreography of the show to the sound track selected by the client. This helps, not only with the client’s peace of mind, but also the planner or coordinator over the event because they have more important things to deal with then wrangling the firework crew.
Do you look back particularly fondly on any memories from childhood?
I must admit that I am a little star-struck, which is why I get so excited when we produce shows alongside famous people like Vanilla Ice, KC and the Sunshine Band, World-Class Olympian Ice Skaters, and the cast of Extreme Makeover: Home Edition.
So, I have to say that my favorite childhood memory, which I didn’t appreciate fully at the time, since I was only seven years old, was being a guest at Farrah Fawcett’s baby shower. Her mother and my grandmother were friends and my family just happened to be visiting the week of the baby shower, so I was able to go and give her a special gift for her son, Redmond O’Neal.
Pricing:
- Local Indoor displays start at $2400
- Local Outdoor displays start at $3900
Contact Info:
- Website: www.pyrotex.com
- Phone: 469-534-0635
- Email: paige@pyrotex.com
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/pyrotexus/
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/PyrotexUS/
- Twitter: https://twitter.com/pyrotexus
- Other: https://www.youtube.com/user/PyrotexUS
Image Credit:
Justin Yoder Studios, Shawn Menary Photography, KJImages
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